So where is the money?

16 December 2010 | Audio

During the biodiversity summit in Nagoya, governments agreed on the so-called Strategic Plan, setting 20 targets to respond to the growing threats to the natural world. But no matter how hard we try to restore and conserve nature, little progress will be made without sufficient funding.

The need for additional funding to support conservation (Strategy for Resource Mobilization) and the urgency of supplementing the existing mechanisms used to finance it (e.g. through Innovative Financial Mechanisms) were among the most controversial issues in Nagoya. The heated debates revealed some unexpected challenges and deep divides between governments, particularly about the role of the private sector in conservation and the level of financial commitments expected from specific countries.

But although no figures were agreed on, in terms of financing conservation action, progress was made to allow this to happen in the future. An important first step will be to establish a funding baseline, which will allow us to know how much is currently being spent on biodiversity and how much more is needed to meet the targets set out in the new Strategic Plan.

Dr. Joshua Bishop, IUCN’s Chief Economist, tells us more about what went right and what went wrong for biodiversity finance in Nagoya:

So what needs to happen now to build on what we’ve achieved so far and have some concrete commitments on the table?